Religious Tempers Flare Among Jews

November 2, 1986|United Press International

JERUSALEM -- Religious tensions among Jews have flared again in Israel, this time when Orthodox followers stormed into a Reform movement service, called the women ``whores,`` kneed a rabbi in the groin and wrestled over sacred Torah scrolls.

The confrontation on a religious holiday last week was just the latest blowup in a long-simmering controversy over which brand of Judaism should prevail in the Holy Land.

Some Orthodox Jews, the majority in Israel, contend their strictly observant approach to religion is the only true way for a Jew -- and don`t hesitate to impose such views on others.

That often has brought the Orthodox into sharp conflict with Reform Jews, who claim about 1 million followers worldwide, but only a few thousand in Israel.

Reform Rabbi Levi Weiman-Kelman, whose service was disrupted by an angry Orthodox rabbi and about 20 supporters, says the confrontation on the Jewish Sabbath was ``beyond my absolute worst case scenario`` of the dispute.

``We are at war,`` Weiman-Kelman fumed.

``We have a national struggle on our hands for the rights of all Jews in the world to be free to worship in Israel,`` said the rabbi, a New Yorker who moved to the country nine years ago.

But Weiman-Kelman`s comments prompted Mordechai Eliahu, chief rabbi of the Sephardic Jews and a leading Orthodox thinker, to remark that there is ``no freedom of religion in Israel.``

What angered the Orthodox was the presence of women at the service in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem. Largely populated by Sephardic, or Oriental, Jews, the neighborhood has become home lately to more and more Reform Jews, many of them immigrants from the United States.

Some Orthodox Jews, who believe there should be no contact between the sexes in religious services and that women should cover their heads, arms and legs out of modesty, regard many Reform Jews as heretics.

Weiman-Kelman`s Reform congregation was marking Simhat Torah, the end of the Succot festival, in a makeshift synagogue in a gymnasium: About 150 men and women singing and swaying in a circle. Many of the women were bare-headed and wore short sleeves.

Orthodox Rabbi Eliahu Abergil and 20 followers exploded into the service. One Reform worshipper claimed someone in the group yelled ``you whores`` at the women. Weiman-Kelman says one intruder kneed him in the groin, yelling in both Hebrew and English: ``I`m going to kill you.``

Weiman-Kelman said two Orthodox intruders yanked Torah scrolls from the hands of Reform Jews and tried to run off with them.

Abergil ``started screaming that we were sinners, we were evil, we were corrupt, that this synagogue was a whorehouse,`` Weiman-Kelman recalled. ``There is something really absurd about watching a man in a black suit and beard yelling `you whore` to a pregnant woman.``

After 20 minutes, the Reform rabbi said, everyone in his congregation started dancing in defiance of the Orthodox intruders and, in essence, danced them right out of the room.

Weiman-Kelman said he initially filed police complaints against Abergil and his followers. The complaints -- one accused the Orthodox Jews of slander for saying they saw ``naked men and women dancing with the Torah`` -- were withdrawn after Abergil apologized in writing, he said.

Abergil, who heads 23 state-funded synagogues in Baka, said he entered the gym because he wanted to ``explain to the people that what they were doing was wrong.``

Despite an agreement not to harass the Reform Jews again, Abergil insisted the mainstream Baka community does not want Weiman-Kelman`s congregation in its midst.

``I`m going to invite the Reform rabbi to come to talk to me and I`m going to tell him to stop allowing his congregation to dance together,`` he said. ``People do change.``